DJI escapes US drone ban — but may get banned automatically unless Trump steps in

The US Senate has passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual defense spending bill, and it may have major consequences for the world’s largest drone company — though not necessarily the immediate ban that China’s DJI feared.

While it did not contain the full “Countering CCP Drones Act” provisions that would have quickly blocked imports of DJI products into the United States, it instead kicks off a one-year countdown until its products (and those of rival dronemaker Autel Robotics) are automatically banned.

If DJI cannot convince “an appropriate national security agency” to publicly declare that its products do not “pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States,” the act instructs the FCC to add DJI’s gear to its “covered list” under the Secure and Trusted Communication Networks Act. Not only does that list keep that gear from running on US networks, it bars the FCC from authorizing their internal radios for use in the US, effectively blocking all imports.

While none of that would keep US citizens from continuing to use their existing DJI gadgets, it wouldn’t just ban new DJI drones from import into the United States. Every DJI product with a radio or camera, like the Verge favorite DJI Osmo Pocket 3, would technically be banned. (The NDAA doesn’t specify just drones, but rather communications and video surveillance equipment.)

The text of the bill (PDF, see page 1084-1088) should theoretically prevent DJI from exploiting the loophole of whitelabeling its drones under other brand names or licensing its technology, too, as it seemed to be doing with the Anzu Robotics Raptor and Cogito Specta. The bill explicitly tells the FCC to add “any subsidiary, affiliate, or partner” and “any entity to which the named entity has a technology sharing or licensing agreement” to the covered list, too.

The bill had already passed the House of Representatives and is headed to President Biden’s desk, where it’s considered a must-sign: it would trigger a partial government shutdown if not signed, and it already passed both houses of Congress with strong bipartisan support.

So it’ll really be up to the Trump administration as to whether it wants to rescue the Chinese drone company, in the year after he takes office. Trump may not need to lift a finger if he’d prefer to see fewer DJI products in the country, so the ball’s in DJI’s court. It wouldn’t be surprising if DJI tries to get face time with Trump in the near future — like TikTok, which is more imminently facing a ban.

In a blog post, DJI calls it “good news” that the NDAA doesn’t explicitly ban DJI products, but says the US government is singling out Chinese drones for scrutiny, and worries about the fact that the law doesn’t specify a government agency to actually carry out the task of determining whether it poses a risk.

“This means that DJI would be prevented from launching new products in the US market through no fault of its own, but simply because no agency chose to take on the work of studying our products,” the company writes. It’s asking Congress to pick a “technically focused agency to assure the assessment is evidence-based,” and to give the company the opportunity to reply.